In Chloe Cooper Jones’ memoir Easy Beauty, Jones writes about her experience living with sacral agenesis, a visible congenital disability that affects her stature and gait. Cooper Jones is an intellectual, a philosopher, an art lover – but she’s also a spy.

Men, often immediately dismissing her as undesirable due to her disability, say outrageous things to and in front of her, discussing their evaluation of other women’s attractiveness and even debating whether people with disabilities should exist at all. Unable to see Cooper Jones as an object of desire, they also often fail to see her as human, and so she becomes a confessional for all the things they daren’t say to other women – with good reason.

The results are fascinating and horrifying, and as she does with her physical pain, Cooper Jones finds ways to numb out her reality when the emotional pain of it all becomes too much. Listening to two men at a bar debate whether people with disabilities would exist in an ideal society, Cooper Jones writes, “I can sit through their conversation from a remove. It won’t last forever. So, I seal myself up, I become a statue, I lean against the wall, am bordered by neon light; I try on, keep on, a fixed expression; I leave the scene and becomes a surface only

“The men bicker over the issue of my unfortunate birth. I search for anger and find only numbness. I centre myself in The Neutral Room, a separated space inside my mind I constructed when I was very young as a method for dissociating from physical pain. There are no doors or windows in the neutral room, nothing but white walls... I’m lost in a void that nullifies, dulls what needs dulling.”

Cooper Jones’ book, which also explores the nature of art and beauty itself, is filled with scenes that show how ideas about beauty, ugliness, desire and disgust play out in every day life – themes that are on full display in Aaron Schimberg’s film A Different Man. Schimberg was born with a cleft palette and has made several films about people with facial disfigurement, including Chained For Life, which starred Adam Pearson, who cinephiles will know from his appearance in Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin.

Pearson has neurofibromatosis, a condition which causes the growth of tumours, most noticeably on his face. In A Different Man, lead character Edward - who lives alone in New York - also has the condition. His appearance causes people to stare at him, taunt him and occasionally recoil, which has eroded his self-esteem. He shuffles through the world, hanging his head, either disconnected from the world around him or shrinking from it in an act of preservation.

He seems to constantly have one foot in his own Neutral Room, because being fully present in a world of constant rejection is simply too painful. It’s no wonder he dreams of being an actor, of being able to inhabit different characters and bodies. But it’s not going well – partly due to his mediocre talent, and partly due to directors’ stigma and inability to see him as a person beyond his appearance.

Oh, and Edward isn’t played by Adam Pearson. Edward is played by the very handsome actor Sebastian Stan, who wears prosthetics – until Edward is offered a groundbreaking medical treatment that essentially melts his tumours away, revealing the Sebastian Stan-shaped bone structure underneath. But when newly conventionally attractive Edward gets the chance to play a character with neurofibromatosis in a play, Edward dons prosthetics of his pre-treatment face.

These choices of both Aaron Schimberg’s and Edward the character may immediately feel uncomfortable for some – and discomfort is what Schimberg revels in playing with. The entire film is laced with questions about art, representation, exploitation and virtue signalling when it comes to disabilities and disfigurement. The embodiment of these questions is Edward’s neighbour Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), who visibly recoils when she first sees him, before making a concerted effort to befriend him – whether out of shame over her initial reaction, objectifying curiosity, genuine interest, or a blend of all three, remains unclear.

What is clear is that Ingrid is happy to mine Edward’s life for material for a play, though she won’t admit it – a lie that is only enabled because Edward is lying too. When Edward’s treatment completely transforms his appearance, he abandons his life as Edward and pretends to be someone else entirely, using a different name.  Calling out Ingrid’s self-serving discarding of Edward’s identity and autonomy is much harder to do when Edward is trying to discard himself, too.

But of course, he can’t. Edward’s trauma runs deep, and his self-loathing, depression and distrust of other people doesn’t magically lift, no matter how many women eye him up in bars. This shouldn’t be surprising – having evidence that the world’s value of you is utterly superficial isn’t likely to instil trust and genuine feelings of self-worth.

But Schimberg plays with our assumptions here, that being movie star-handsome would solve all of Edward’s problems. It doesn’t – but neither can we assume that Edward’s old appearance was the cause of all his problems, something that becomes evident when he meets Oswald. Oswald has neurofibromatosis and looks very much like Edward before his transformation - but unlike Edward, also has charisma, swagger, lots of friends, even more female admirers, and a relentlessly positive outlook. Oswald is played by Adam Pearson.

The high-concept nature of A Different Man continues expanding after Adam Pearson appears onscreen, with more twists and turns in Edward’s story taking the film into the territory of pitch black comedy. Some of these turns feel excessive and distracting in a film already rich with characterisation and ideas, and Schimberg’s deft side-stepping of cliché as he makes all his characters flawed.

Adam Pearson is marvellous as Oswald, whose affected charm always feels like a performance – though of course, we can understand his desire to ingratiate himself to those around him. Ingrid’s casual cruelty reveals a woman used to being indulged because of her beauty, though the screenplay could have done more to explore the way she too is patronised and overlooked.

The three main characters hold so many ideas that it feels like a shame when Schimberg’s screenplay takes a few wild swings in the final thirty minutes instead of simply letting the themes develop and linger. More successful is the film’s style, which shows us New York as grey, dull and joyless as Edward’s experience of it, while the face transformation scene provides some visceral body horror on the level of The Substance, another film exploring ideas of replacements, societal stigma and self-acceptance.

As more and more directors explore the way beauty standards are perpetuated ins society, it seems that these film’s protagonist aren’t the ones who need a good long look in the mirror.